The growth of municipal broadband networks

[swmike at swm.pp.se (Mikael Abrahamsson)]

On Fri, 25 Mar 2011, Leo Bicknell wrote:

> To that end, I think the US would be much better off with fiber to the 
> home on a single distribution infrastructure.  That could be owned and 
> operated by the municipality (like the water system) or owned and 
> operated by a corporation granted an exclusive right to service an area 
> (think telephone, at least pre CLEC).

+1.

The layout of the old copper telephone layout is basically sound, you 
aggregate thousands of households via X length of cable into a single 
place, then you let anyone who wants to, rent space/power in there to put 
in their equipment and rent this fiber to the end user 
household/enterprise.

Do this with fiber to the home, and also provide rentable long haul fiber 
(to the next town etc) and rent out this infrastructure at decent 
pricepoint, you have a situation with a very low entry-cost for new 
players which is great for competition and in the long run, for the end 
customer.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se